


Maurice - ficlets

by devo79



Category: Maurice (1987), Maurice - E. M. Forster
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-16
Updated: 2012-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-03 18:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devo79/pseuds/devo79
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I use quotes from some of the cases described in E. Carpenter’s The Intermediate Sex and Magnus Hirschfeld’s writings.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. The Greenwood

**Author's Note:**

> I use quotes from some of the cases described in E. Carpenter’s The Intermediate Sex and Magnus Hirschfeld’s writings.

Maurice no longer slept uneasily. He knew that he was loved and that pretence and lies were no longer necessary. And with this knowledge had come peace. Once he had thought that the only reasonable end to his agony and struggle was death. But now his every living hour was illuminated with his love for life.

He often found that whenever he and Alec were separated, his thoughts would keep returning to Alec. Embodying as he did love, Alec could heal all hurts and wounds that were the results of Maurice’s fears and doubts. As nature and social law had been so cruel as to impose a severe celibacy on him for so long, he had fought for freedom and achieved it. But only because Alec had supported him. He trusted to Alec his weakness and secrets. 

Confidence demanded that the last door of his heart should be unclosed and revealed to his friend. Ever since Maurice had come into this world his heart had been an enigma that he himself could not solve. But for every hour spent with Alec he could glimpse more and more of the elusive solution. 

All of the sudden he felt a little low and lonesome. Alec had not yet come home from his trip to the village. It was not fear for Alec never to return but simply the fact that Maurice found it hard to breathe freely whenever they were separated. 

Maurice had soon realised that the love he felt for Alec was different than his love for Clive. He had been willing to give Clive everything. His past, his future and his whole being. But Clive had not accepted the gift presented to him. Instead he had enslaved Maurice with his neglect. In this was the great difference between Alec and Clive. Alec recognised the splendour of the gift and in return had given freedom and love.

 

And now every object which other people, and indeed in the past Maurice himself, usually pursued – honour, high position and wealth – seemed vain and unattractive.


	2. The Trenches

Words of love being so few and inadequate, everything that was said between them was liable to be misunderstood or worse overheard by others. So they dared not speak. Their passion, restrained but never ending, turned into an all consuming hunger. 

There were occasions where they could stand side by side leaning against the walls of the trenches. Behind their backs, unseen by the others, Maurice would let his hand rest on the small of Alec’s back or Alec would interlace his fingers with Maurice’s. 

Those moments of stolen pleasure would often seem more painful than not touching at all because they could not stand the thought of the things they could not do or the memory of passions fulfilled in the past. 

They were, in short, together but separated and miserable.


	3. Waiting

Maurice sat in the armchair. Minutes feeling like decades he held Alec’s letter in his hand. All he could do now was wait. So he waited. One moment doubting that Alec would come the next knowing for certain that he would. 

He could not help but wonder if Alec had felt the same way waiting for him in the boathouse for two nights. 'I got no sleep waiting' he remembered Alec saying. A swirl of contradictory thoughts and feelings surged through his body. First passionate longing, then, deep delight and angry frustration and finally, when the storm had passed a kind of gratitude. 

Before Alec Maurice had felt set apart from the rest of mankind until that glorious night in the Russet Room. He no longer regarded his feelings as unnatural or abnormal, since they had disclosed themselves so perfectly naturally and spontaneously within him. Earlier his every emotion had been cut short and worn out by thousand doubts. He had felt the need for constant secrecy. 

But no more. Ever since he had given free rein to his true nature, he had been happier than ever before. He only mourned one thing. Clive would never truly be happy. He still stumbled around in the dark.

 

A knock on the door startled Maurice who had been lost in his own thoughts. Again the knock, this time more insisting. Maurice wanted to speak, to call out, but his mouth was suddenly dry. 

The door opened and for a moment, a horrible fear stricken moment, he did not recognise Alec. The young man from Penge and the boathouse was gone replaced by a man Maurice immediately fell in love with. Alec stood there in the doorway, hair cut short and wearing his uniform. Maurice stood up. 

In three long strides Alec closed the gap between them and embraced him.


End file.
